


Tales of the Void

by Eccho_Valkyria



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I move all the tales over here, M/M, One Shot, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Short Story, a god who wants for nothing, a soft epilogue, be still my beating heart, eyes as black as coal, i guess, just if you wondered, minor fluff, taking care of the outsider, tales of the void, the outsider watches, the young man and the sea, young man is curious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11035845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccho_Valkyria/pseuds/Eccho_Valkyria
Summary: The boy had always wondered what the exact use of the rune artifacts was.Some of the cult members sacrificed food and wine, arranged carefully on plates of copper. Others brought jewellery and precious frippery. All of this seemed far more useful to the boy than a few old whale bones. But what did he knew about the needs of a god in a world full of nothing.Tales of the Void - Part 1UPDATE: I moved all the parts over here and I will add the original version of "a god who wants for nothing" that is called "Be still my beating heart" and was thought lost after my laptop crashed. But I fortunately found it again!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this little piece was brought to life after a nightly conversation about the Outsider and whether or not he would appreciate a plain old blanket as an offering. At least blanket are far more useful than whale bones, in my opinion.
> 
> I usually write in German, which is my mother tongue , so please bear with me. And tell me if and were there are mistakes in spelling or such. 
> 
> And last but not least: Please rate and/or leave a comment and most importantly: Have fun :)

The void was a cold and dreary place. The boy knew that.

Since he woke up that night, not seeing the familiar streets of his hometown but finding himself in the endless width of the void instead, the freezing grasp of the place would not release him.

 

He knew about the legends around this place and it's marked ones. A handful of people wearing _his_ mark and wandering through a world no mortal would enter before their death. People with mighty powers, who almost always had to pay a terrible price for them.

 

The people feared _him_ , the outsider. _The man with eyes as black as coal._

 

He met _him._ Almost.

His trip into the void had found a sudden end, when this pair of eyes had spotted him. Since then he didn't got sucked into that strange world, where everything was so different from what he knew.

 

The boy suspected that his stay in the void had been everything but intentional. Different than the numerous priests, working in secret while being not half as hidden as they thought, he didn't try to attract _his_ attention. There were shrines to honor _him_ all around the town, undetected in abondoned buildings and hidden blind alleys. The citizens knew that every kind of ritual act in _his_ name was prohibited and a punishable offense but they didn't care much. The shrines outlasted.

 

One of these shrines was located in an old abondoned factory. The boy could hear the subtle song of the whalebones wherever he went.The shrine had stood there since he remembered. One day he and his mother had discovered it on their way home. Strange voices seemed to come from the unprofessional carpentered wooden construct and his first impulse had been to draw near, to reach out and check if the dull humming could be felt. But his mother had pulled him back quickly and called the wardens to report the shrine as soon as they got home.

Less than two weeks after that the shrine was rebuild at the very same place.

 

This procedure has continued the same way since then. Once the shrine was removed it never took more than two weeks until it would be consecrated again. But the boy hadn't visited it once.

 

He didn't had a reason to. The cult of the outsider was prohibited and his mother had done her best to keep him away from social marginal groups. And up until now he hadn't had any connection to the cryptic god.

 

But now things were different.

 

How do they say? Once you see something you cannot simply _unsee_ it.

 

The legends told about an outsider, who was above time and space, allknowing and ever so neutral. There was nothing unknown to him, neither the future, that would happen, nor the future that might be happening under certain circumstances. And still, when the black eyes of the leviathan spotted him in the void they had shown a certain level of surprise.

 

Since this night the boy had return to the shrine. Not intentional of course; his feet had brought him back to it over and over again these days, without his head meaning to. Sometimes he walked so mindlessly on his way home, that he had to bump painfully again the wooden boards of the shrine to see where his feet had lead him again.

 

Considering that one could hear the whalebone runes well enough until his homeplace, one could have thought that the noises would be much stronger directly in front of the shrine. But even here the deep humming stayed an ambient noise, that had a more relaxed effect than it should have had.

 

But as much as it itched him to reach for the runes he never dared to.

 

It was a shrine, a holy place, no matter to whom it belonged to. To take sacrificed items from there seemed like blasphemy to him, especially since he didn't even had a use for them. In fact had he always wondered what the exact use of the rune artifacts was.

 

Some of the cult members sacrificed food and wine, arranged carefully on plates of copper. Others brought jewellery and precious frippery. All of this seemed far more useful to the boy than a few old whale bones. But what did he knew about the needs of a god in a world full of nothing. Nothing but coldness and desolation.

 

He remembered clearly the frosty temperature in the void. He had only stayed for a short time but it had cost him ages to warm up again after he had left. He didn't want to imagine how bad it was for the outsider.

 

The boy blinked and made a choice.

 

In the dark of the night he sneaked through the streets, from shadow to shadow, and tried to avoid every other person that perhaps was strolling through the night. He arrived unseen at the old factory and slipped through a small opening into the run-down building.

 

A little further in the back of the hall under a half-collapsed staircase was the shrine. Opulent panels of blue fabric where attached in between the niche and next to the purple glow of the lamps the whole construct only appeared more out of place.

 

The boy came slowly closer. Since the last time he visited someone had brought a new lamp and if he wasn't mistaken there was one of the rune artifacts missing. But the new empty place on the shrine was only convinient. Without a word he put the padded blanked he brought from home onto the wodden surface and stepped back. A few moments passed. Nothing happened.

 

He didn't knew what he was waiting for. Not that he had waited for some kind of reaction. Also there were so many shrines around the town that the outsider impossibly would say thanks in person at every single one of them.

 

Or he just prefered the old whalebones.

 

Slowly the boy made his way home, still avoiding to be seen by anyone. No soul took notice of his ramble, only one pair of eyes he could not escape.

 

_A pair of eyes as black as coal._

 

 


	2. The young man and the sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He started to panic as he continued to sink farther down, pulled down by the whale that managed to free itself completely. His limbs became numb and could not tell above and below apart any longer. For a moment he was sure to die.
> 
> He opened his eyes and saw.
> 
> It was a man, as young as the morning but old as the sea with eyes darker than the deepest night.
> 
> Tales of the Void - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> This is the second part of Tales of the Void, a collection of short stories about the Outsider. The first part was planned as a stand-alone but a user called DpsMercy left a nice little comment about the Outsider wrapped into the blanket of part one. So I wrote another and then I had even more ideas! Soooo, this is not the OS about the blanket (this will be in part 3) BUT it continues our story.
> 
> As I stated before, I am not a native speaker so if there are mistakes please tell me!
> 
> Please rate and/or maybe leave a comment (they work wonders) and as always: Have fun!
> 
> PS: While reading this my friend asked me if I plan to make the Outsider and the young man a couple. I said "yes, kind of.... one could say the two are... homosexuWHALE..." .... she did not appreciate my humor but I couldn't withhold this gem from you.

If one gazes into the abyss long enough, the abyss also gazes back into one.

That was what the sailors on the tugs told one another. The young man tended to agree with them.

For hours now he had watched the waves in front of the bow and his face seemed so green that the men jokingly said he just wasn't seaworthy yet.

But his worried face did not arose for the heavy sea, tossing the ship in every direction, even more since the weather had worsened in the morning. Neither it was from the stinking fish, that did rot below deck for three days now. If you lived next to the local fish market long enough the lingering smell soon became a sign of comfort.

He worried about the actual target of the ship. The whales.

The „Dunwall Empress“ was one of the last whalers in it's harbor now that the huge mammals got rarer every day. The young man wouldn't have chosen a life on the sea, if it wasn't for his mother, who seemed overjoyed for the fact, that he had access to one of the treasured spots on one of the ships.

Times were hard and life had become expensive. So for her he signed on the ship his great uncle owned and went to sea.

One reason for her relief probably also was the fact that he now had to pause his nightly expeditions. The young man had made a habit out of visiting the shrines of the Outsider.

He never took something nor left anything. He only sat there silently. Waiting.

One time he had brought books and passed time with reading after he wasn't able to sleep. At one point he had carelessly place one of them onto the shrine as he started the next book. Soon he had fallen asleep to the sound of the singing whales and when he did woke up again the book had vanished.

After an unsuccessful search he had accepted it as an unintentional sacrifice for the Outsider, who never showed up though. Not that he tried him to.

And now he was here.

The shouts of the men forced him out of his daydreams. One of the sailors had discovered a fluke on the horizon and the crew was happy about the possibility of returning home sooner than planned. They rushed to work and the young man was pushed around more then once as they hurried to hunt the animal down and to heave it onto the ship.

The whale was a fighter and didn't endured the procedure quietly. Again and again it threw itself against the ropes and cried loudly about its pain. It was so loud that it hurt his soul.

The call of his name cut threw the whistling wind, after one rope tore and he was barked at to fix it instead of just standing around.

Reluctantly he moved, approached the ship's rail and reached for the almost torn knot, when he suddenly looked onto the gigantic eye of the whale.

He didn't know what he saw in them, what exactly made him retreat, but before he could prevent it, he slipped and fell.

The water was piercing and burned in his eyes as much as in his lungs. The impact had pushed all air out of his body.

He started to panic as he continued to sink farther down, pulled down by the whale that managed to free itself completely. His limbs became numb and could not tell above and below apart any longer. For a moment he was sure to die.

He opened his eyes and saw.

In the deep dark of the water he spotted a figure, not clearly, because the salt water blurred his vision, but it was definitely a person.

Were the stories that the shell backs told one another in the dives true, about mermaids and sirens choosing victims out of young men to lure them into the cold death of the ocean? Had the whale been their accomplice?

The young man nearly lost himself in his own thoughts, when he recognized the person in front of him.

It was a man, as young as the morning but old as the sea with eyes darker than the deepest night.

The Outsider did not smile, but he also did not look like he wanted to pull him farther down. He only floated in front of him and watched the boy with a certain fascination.

The young man stopped struggling and began to drift.

Was this the gods way of saying thank you? Did he want to be there for him in his last moments so he would not have to die alone? Or was he possible already dead and passed over into the void, where all things eventually end up?

His arms felt frozen but nevertheless he reached out for the figure. The Outsider did not move and he had almost reached him when something pulled him into the opposite direction.

Suddenly he remembered that he needed air to breath and the salty water burned cruelly in his throat. He had perceived the water as cold as ice but when he broke through the surface he found the air even more piercing. One man had jumped after him and brought him back to the ship, where the others could pull him back up.

The young man was shaking in his wet clothes and the water did not stop to pour out of his lungs.

Coughing he opened his eyes and saw the captain ordering his crew around. They would return home. The catch was lost.

The young man had feverish dreams that night.

The sailors prayed for his health, since the death was known to get his victims, once rescued from the deadly sea, back in one way or another.

None of them noticed the faint song of the whales and the gaze of the blackened eyes, that followed the boy into his deepest dreams.


	3. (Alternative Chapter 3) A God who wants for nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But the damage had been done already. It was very uncomfortable to be caught unaware for all-seeing god, but it had happened and it made him restless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> Long time no read but here we are again with part 3 of Tales of the Void! This time you shall have a cuddly outsider with a blanket which was gifted to him by a handsome young man.
> 
> Please rate and/or leave a comment, I really appreciate feedback and as always I am a non native speaker so if there are mistakes I am very sorry and will correct them as soon as possible if you tell me :)
> 
> And most important: Have fun!

The outsider was restless. 

He was timeless as the void, if not as old, and used to watch the lives of humans for a long time now. He watched, how destiny pulled its strings, how the smallest of things brought the greatest changes but he did never interfere.   
Alas, maybe he did, but very seldom and only to make things a tad more interesting. When a person caught his interest. If they did. 

If he didn't, he only watched and he used to with a patience, only an immortal could muster. The Outsider had this kind of patience, but today he was restless. 

Now and again it happened, that a human did something to change the way of the world and the outsider watched them with great interest. Seldom he pulled them into his world and offered them his mark, so they were able to do even more interesting things. 

Never before it had happened that one of these humans found the way into the void on their own. 

But then there had been this boy. 

The outsider crossed his arms and pouted. It was very uncomfortable to be caught unaware for all-seeing god, but it had happened and it made him restless. The boy had simply stumbled into the void like it was nothing and the outsider had been that surprised, that he did need a few minutes to remember sending him back. 

But the damage had been done already. Every creature that stepped into the void left their traces and was connected with him forever. The connection was thin but whether he liked it or not, the eyes of the leviathan lay upon the young man and followed his every step. To his surprise the steps of the young man led him every so often to one of his shrines. 

The shrines were hard to find, except for those who truly searched for them. They sang for those, who would listen and led those, who was chosen. The chosen ones always found something helpful there and his followers used to leave gifts in hope it would assure them his blessing. 

The boy did neither of that. 

He found the shrine, followed its song and stayed. One day he brought a book he was reading. Without wanting to he sent it into the void and searched hours for it after it vanished. When he finally understood what had happened, he started to laugh. 

Some time later he had brought a gift. He didn't quite seem to know what he did, as he carefully placed a blanket onto the withered wood and waited for some kind of reaction. Unsatisfied he had returned home, as upset as the outsider about the power that again and again urged him to the shrine. 

A bundle fabric hovered in front of him and caught his eye. 

Without a thought he reached for it and felt the fabric between his fingers. The blanket was soft, a bit outworn and different to everything else in the void it didn't smell like salt and algae. It smelled like warm wool, peppermint tea and freshly baked bread. It smelled like home. 

The outsider frowned but didn't dare to let the fabric disappear into the nothingness of the void.It was a gift and one that didn't demand something in return. 

The whale that swam behind him let out a deep growl. The outsider let out a sigh. 

Why did the young man gave away something of such personal worth? Why of all people to a god he did not worship and at a place everybody could take it from? Did home meant nothing to him? Did he leave his home and joined the last whalers of Dunwall to go to sea for that reason? 

The whale protested silently. He was right, the boy was no whaler. Watching his prey he had gone pale as a drunken sailor and hadn't the heart to kill it. He looked into it's eye and almost as if he had also looked into it's heart he let it free itself. He went by the board, but the outsider, who had sworn himself to not interfere with the life of mortals, couldn't let him drown. 

Most of the legends the sailors told in the tavern after they went home from their journeys were nothing but phantasms of old men, whose eyesight worsened with age, while their fantasy grew. Those who dared to go far out into the water late at night might see things no human should ever see. Creatures with huge dark eyes and too much teeth that swam beside the ships trunk and threatened to pull you over into the deep dark of the sea. 

The young man must have seen a picture like that, when the outsider appeared in front of him in the dark water and manipulated time and space around him so he would not leave this world before his time. But he showed no fear. Instead of pulling back he reached out and almost touched him, if the sailors wouldn't have pulled him back on board. 

This fact made the outsider restless. 

Everyone of his followers adored him in one way or another, but no one did it for his sake. They all wanted power to reach their goal, power he did willingly provide for a little entertainment in return. Not one of them got into his company without ulterior motive. 

The Outsider pulled the blanket tight around him and decided to keep an eye on the boy. He had to find out what he wanted, if he would be a thread. If he was capable to enter the void on his own, who knew what else he could do. 

The black eyed god thought of all of this as very fascinating.


	4. Be still my beating heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was the original third chapter, which I thought had lost after my laptop crashed.

The Outsider was bored.  
  
The world had become quiet, as quiet as a world like this was able to, and for a long time nothing had happened to catch the whale gods interest.  
  
None of his marked ones could fascinate him anymore, and the one who could preferred a quiet life behind secure palace walls. Utterly disappointing, he thought.  
  
The Outsider swung his legs over the edge of the void island he was sitting on and looked around.  
  
In the distance a leviathan made his rounds and his song echoed through the void like a sad lullaby. The void invented itself new every few seconds. The floating islands constructed themselves and imitated parts of the real world only differently put together.  
  
Nothing that got lost in the waking world ever truly vanished. The void was a place that remembered what others had forgotten and the most different things came up here.  
  
A pair of cloves, forgotten at a park bench on a rainy day.  
  
A ring, lost behind a drawer, engraved the words: “For my love, Louise“. Its last owner however had carried a different name.  
  
And eventually a blanket, quilted by hand in dark blue with silver embroideries. This one hadn't been forgotten or lost. It had been a gift.  
  
Most of the things that were left on his shrines were left for a reason. Desperate beggars asked for a blessing, heretic priests for his attention. Others asked for power.  
  
They brought offerings to please him hoping he would render them a favour. All of them uninteresting and not worth to think about.  
  
But this one was a gift, willingly given and without ulterior motive, a token of affection. It had once belonged to a boy, that more or less accidentally had met the Outsider.  
  
Priests had tried for years to enter the fade, through drugs or near death experiences, but none of them had been successful. It was almost laughable that a young lad did what educated men failed to do for centuries, particularly since he didn't mean to. He seemed to have an exceptional gift to pass the veil.  
  
The Outsider had been careless. There had been things needing his attention, things that were going to form a whole empire, and he was unprepared as it hit him and he wasn't alone in the vastness anymore.  
  
Hard to tell who of them had been more surprised.  
  
Just a moment later he threw him out.  
  
He hadn't heard anything from the young man since then, though he stood in front of his shrines often enough. He didn't know that the Outsider witnessed each of his visits. So he did the day when the young man left something for him.  
  
The Outsider reached out for some floating piece of fabric and covered his shoulders with it.  
  
The blanket was warm, contrasting the harsh cold of the void. It felt like freshly baked bread, a crackling bonfire and a long forgotten childhood.  
  
A few weeks after that it had been a book that appeared in front of him. The young prince of Tyvia. It wasn't a gift, more an inadvertence that brought it there. The boy had searched a whole while for it, before he noticed his mistake and accepted its loss.  
  
The Outsider had watched him with amusement and was almost crestfallen when he left. He smothered the feeling and tried out his new reading.  
  
But the boy returned, almost daily and the Outsider simply did not understand what he aimed for. He brought nothing with him, took nothing, he only sat there.  
  
The Outsider got used to his presence and became anxious when he suddenly stopped turning up.  
  
Then the whale appeared.  
  
The Outsider knew a hundred versions of the future and the boy died in almost every one of them. On a whim he decided to show himself, though did not exactly know why. Gratitude for his silent company? A try to give solace in his last moments, for he should not dread, his fate was already decided?  
  
But had his time already come?  
  
When the boy recognised the figure in front of him, he did something that neither the Outsider nor fate had seen coming. He did not back away but watched him motionlessly. He stopped working against the tide and went still. Then he lifted his hand.  
  
Only centimetres before he could touch him they pulled him away from death's door.  
  
The Outsider pulled the blanket closer around himself and snorted. The leviathan sang his sorrowful song in the distance, mocking him. He sent him off.  
  
The young man didn't fear him. He cared for him, gave him something, that for once since centuries was not only useful but without a request. This gesture provoked something in him, which he could not describe.  
  
He shook his head, breathed out and straightened up. If the world wouldn't provide him some entertainment he would create it himself, he thought and watched over the sleeping boy who was going home on board of a tugboat, whose crew was sure that he wasn't to survive the night.

 

 


	5. A soft epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tales of the Void - The last part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must apologize. I totally forgot that I had this last chapter flying around and did not translate it but I remembered and finally here it is.

  
  
The atmosphere in the tavern was cheery. The local fisherman had returned after a good catch and celebrated their success with apple cider, dark break and tyvian pears. The young man said cheers to one of the captains, who smiled friendly at him. He hadn't been on the sea for quite a while.  
  
Since the 'Dunwell Empress' had returned home, unsuccessful for the whale had escaped, he hadn't entered a ship. His mother had meant well, but he wasn't made for a life on the water. He had begun to work at the tavern next to the port instead.  
  
His mother had died because of an illness a year ago. Her last wish had been to protect him from the danger of heresy and the wrath of the overseers, so he promised to not visit the shrines anymore, even now as he was home again.  
  
A girl bumped him. She was the daughter of the innkeeper and a good friend of the boy. Her mother didn't hide her wish for him to become a part of the family but though a liked the girl truthfully, he saw no future with her on his side.  
  
He looked pale, she let him know. Indeed, he felt ill. A strange feeling had taken hold of him, tied up his chest and hindered his breathing. He apologised and went outside.  
  
The night was calm and the wind piercing. The boy wandered along the pier and watched the sea, whose waves softly buffeted the wooden poles.  
  
He hadn't broken his promise, even though the mystic songs of the whales had tried to lure him to the shrine in the old factory every other night. A few times he had found himself at the gates of the building, but he had never entered. Night after night he had to remind himself about his promise and one day the calls of the leviathan fell silent.  
  
The morning came and dipped the port into a reddish light.  
  
The fisherman prepared for work, besides that the port was empty. The young man sat down on the port's border and rubbed his hands.  
  
When the last whalers had disappeared, the sea seemed to have lost a part of its ferocity. At least he felt as if for everytime he looked out into the waves, that let the boats sway softly, he felt as if something was missing.  
  
The song of the bone artefacts had fallen silent too.  
  
The young man asked himself why it had happened. Had he, after years of avoiding those shrines, missed his opportunity? Had the overseers reached their goal and eventually cut all connections to the whale god? Or had a new age began, where there was no place for mystic whale bones, engraved with cryptic runes of an old god? What ever it was, change was in the air and the young man noticed, that he got overwhelmed from a certain feeling. A feeling he did not dare to hope to feel again.  
  
The same power that once had lured him to the shrine, now pressured him out to the haven. His heartbeat fastened and as he worriedly turned around he noticed he was alone no longer.  
  
There at the pier, only metres away from him, stood a person. A tall figure, thin and with a turned-up collar, hands buried in the pockets of his coat. The young man looked up and almost expected to find two pitch black eyes in the half hidden face. Everything about him seemed so familiar and strange at the same time and the young man feared to get sucked into the cold wasteland of the void any moment. But his counterpart smiled.  
  
His green eyes twinkled as he reached out and said thank you for his gift with a voice that had lost its mystic echo but not its fond mockery.  
  
The young man remembered the day he looked into the eye of the captured leviathan, the day he insecurely had placed the blanket onto the shrine and the day he had unintentionally entered the void and had seen the face of the Outsider, who had seemed to be equally surprised as himself.  
  
Quickly the young man pulled himself together and threw himself into the arms of the now mortal god, who take a step back out of surprise but eagerly caught him. He found it utterly fascinating how things had turned out. He was just a boy who had stumbled into the void one night, who hadn't exactly know what to expect from a god and eventually hadn't requested anything at all.  
  
Maybe this was the way to the goal so many strove for. Only those without demands, without a wish or intent, only those would find their way into the depths of the void themselves.  
  
The whale god shook his head. The void was nothing he would think about anymore, neither how one could enter nor how one could leave it. A new life awaited him, a different one, and he wanted to start it with this utterly fascinating boy.


End file.
